Watch these robots build a timber house structure in Switzerland

A team of researchers from Swiss university ETH Zurich is to use robots to help assemble prefabricated timber modules into a 100 sq m, three-storey house. [...]

The robots use information from a CAD model to cut and arrange the beams, then drill holes and connect them. Human workers bolt the beams together.
— Global Construction Review

Photo: NCCR Digital Fabrication / Roman Keller

The Spatial Timber Assemblies robotic research project, with support from Switzerland's National Centre of Competence in Research Digital Fabrication, is the first large-scale architectural application for the construction robots at the new Robotic Fabrication Laboratory at the ETH Zurich.

Photo: NCCR Digital Fabrication / Roman Keller

"Unlike traditional timber frame construction, Spatial Timber Assemblies can manage without reinforcement plates because the required rigidity and load-bearing result from the geometric structure," the NCCR project description explains.

Photo: NCCR Digital Fabrication / Roman Keller

"Not only does this save material; it also opens up new creative possibilities. A total of six spatial, geometrically unique timber modules will be prefabricated in this way for the first time. Lorries will then transport them to the DFAB HOUSE construction site at the NEST in Dübendorf, where they will be joined to build a two-storey residential unit with more than 100 m2 of floor space. The complex geometry of the timber construction will remain visible behind a transparent membrane façade."

Photo: NCCR Digital Fabrication / Roman Keller

Learn more about Spatial Timber Assemblies and DFAB HOUSE here, and watch the robots (and some humans) in action in the video below.